MCOL Blog

By Lindsay Resnick, February 8, 2010

Member-centric Medicare Advantage plans have loyal, trusting customers. It’s not easy to steal a loyal member. More importantly, loyalty equals customer LifeTime Value which translates into stable membership and sustained profitability. In the Medicare market, competitive rivalry is at an all-time high, with well-orchestrated “switcher” campaigns targeting YOUR members. And, at a time when beneficiaries are seeing big changes in benefits and rates, plans seeing even the slightest uptick in voluntary disenrollment are also feeling the threat to long-term profitability.

Retaining members by creating loyal, satisfied customers has never been more important; particularly when acquiring new members is as much as 5-times the cost of keeping existing ones. Successful member retention takes proactive, personal customer service built on an attitude of MEMBERCENTRICITY. Improving customer loyalty is one of the least expensive, most impactful ways to protect membership and improve margins. Successful retention programs are based on three core principles:

• Data Driven The more you know about your customers, who’s at risk and what’s important to them, the more members you will retain. Understanding your customer demographic and psychographic indicators helps build loyalty.

• Continuous Interaction Frequent, personalized member outreach has huge payoff by reinforcing plan value and reaffirming a consumer’s purchase— from welcome calls to an array of “after-sale sale” communications.

• Meaningful Messaging Create a dialogue with customers…not a monologue. Seniors are looking for guidance and interaction that’s meaningful to their situation throughout their membership lifecycle—part customer service, part sales, and part senior advocacy.

Across America, consumers have become much less forgiving of bad service. In a heartbeat, they will just take their wallet and loyalty somewhere else. A member-centric Medicare Advantage experience involves every interaction with a plan’s members?every telephone call, every email exchange, and every written communication. Make sure your plan embraces a high-touch, high-results philosophy. Retention is the ultimate measure of success in Medicare Advantage.

By Clive Riddle, February 4, 2010

The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics this week released preliminary results from their National Health Interview Survey, a national household survey regarding consumer use of health information technology with data collected from January through June 2009.

Their report cites a previous study:  The social life of health information [online]. Pew Internet and American Life Project. 2009, which found 74% of adults in the U.S. use the Internet, 61% have used the Internet to search for health or medical information and, 49% of adults have accessed a website that provides information about a specific medical condition or problem.

• The new National Health Interview Survey examined use by adults age 18-64 and found that women’s consumer use of health care internet exceeded men’s in every category:
• 50.8% used the Internet to look up health information during the past 12 months (58.0% of women, 43.4% of men)
• 3.3% used an online chat group to learn about health topics in the past 12 months (4.1% of women, 2.5% of men)
  4.9% communicated with a health care provider by e-mail in the past 12 months (5.6% of women, 4.2% of men)
• 6.0% requested a refill of a prescription on the Internet during the six month survey period ((6.6% of women, 5.3% of men)
• 2.7% had made an appointment with a health care provider in the past 12 months using the Internet (3.5% of women, 1.8% of men)

By Clive Riddle, President, MCOL

MCOL has just released results from our eighth annual Future Care* e-poll survey conducted this month of Future Care web summit attendees and MCOL members. Almost all responses were received after the Brown Massachusetts Senate election. Respondents represented the following perspectives:

• Payor - 30.5%
• Provider - 33.6%
• Vendor - 16.4%
• Other - 19.5%

We ask participants three questions each year. First, which of the following health care business trends do you think will have the greatest overall impact in the coming year? Respondents point to health reform and the recession as the big drivers. Its also interesting to see how cost sharing increases have significantly diminished in importance last year and this year. Here’s this year’s and historical responses:

Conversely, we asked what predicted trends do you feel is LEAST likely to occur or have an impact in the next two years? Respondents feel health plan premium increases won’t keep cooling down, and there are plenty of health care reform skeptics:

Lastly, we asked respondents to rank stakeholders as winners or losers for the coming year.  Respondents feel pharmaceutical plans will by far fare the best among stakeholders, with health plans finishing a distant second, and all other stakeholders ranked way back.  Of course the great unknown is health reform, which could significantly alter the fortunes for health plans depending on the final structure.

From a historical perspective, here’s how respondents see health plans future prospects from year to year. Note that despite the potential of health reform, optimism for health plans returned a little this year, after pervasive pessimism from 2007 through 2009:

* The Future Care survey incorporates respondents from MCOL Future Care Web Summit attendees and MCOL members. n = 131 for 2010, 90 for 2009, 127 for 2008, 146 for 2007, 267 for 2006, 110 for 2005; 118 for 2004; 139 for 2003

by Claire Thayer, January 21, 2010

MCOL’s Healthcare Web Summit has announced a new webinar event that will focus on health benefit plan compliance. Join Mr. Ashley Gillihan, Esq. of Alston & Bird, LLP on Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 1PM  for up-to-date information on the new Mental Health Parity and Addiction Act provisions effective in 2010; Michelle’s Law; Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act; HIPAA HITECH Privacy Changes; key state health care reform laws, and more.
Detailed information at:

http://www.healthwebsummit.com/compliance022510.htm

by Clive Riddle, January 21, 2010

What a difference a week makes! Amidst the political chaos and confusion during the past few days on status and prospects of health care reform, some prominent pundits and lawmakers are either proclaiming health reform is absolutely dead, or that there is still a viable pathway for reform, and it will pass. Both sides of the spectrum voicing such certainty right now would seem to be ‘spinning.’ Chaos and confusion should reign as we speak, because at this point either outcome is quite possible. Thus for now, one would be wise to position for a range of possibilities.

Here are some key points to consider in this “anything’s possible” phase that will undoubtedly clear up with a little time:

• The public nationally is clearly not happy with reform as proposed. The latest Wall Street Journal / NBC poll released this week tracking this issue pegged approval ratings of Obama's handling of health care at 38% approval and 55% disapproval.

• But doing nothing, and opposing everything isn’t necessarily popular either. The same WSJ/NMC poll gave Republicans an even lower approval rating for their handling of health care: 26% approval and 64% disapproval.

• Lawmakers up for reelection this year are looking to the Massachusetts Senate election as the referendum on health reform, so some Democrats may reverse course next time around with any health reform votes. But the Washington Post today makes an interesting point: “the Republican candidate rode to victory on a message more nuanced than flat-out resistance to universal health coverage: Massachusetts residents, he said, already had insurance and should not have to pay for it elsewhere.”

• President Obama has just signaled in an ABC interview that he would like Congress to revise the reform package to include core elements that would be more publicly acceptable and potentially gain support of a few Republicans: "We know that we need insurance reform, that the health insurance companies are taking advantage of people. We know that we have to have some form of cost containment because if we don't, then our budgets are going to blow up…And we know that small businesses are going to need help so that they can provide health insurance for their families. Those are the core, some of the core elements of this bill."

• The available options for the Senate and House to proceed leave no clear path, and plenty of disagreement. The President stated he doesn’t want to Senate to “jam” something through before new Massachusetts Senator Brown arrives, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid agreed this approach would not be taken. The option of the House adopting the Senate version of the reform bill as-is, has been floated, but House Speaker Pelosi is signaling the votes aren’t there at this time. Instead, she is looking at getting the House to pass the Senate Bill in combination with a companion clean-up bill.  The House has a year until the Senate Bill expires. The other options include a new watered down bill as the President now advocates, or an attempt to jam various components of the bill through budget reconciliation, which just requires a simple majority to pass, but also could trigger delays,  messy procedural fights with Republicans and make Democrats up for re –election skittish about potential public wrath.